CD-i Zelda receives fanmade PC remasters

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The famous Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon for the Philips CD-i have received well-deserved PC remasters by an amateur developer going by the name of Dopply, fixing many of the common issues and complaints such as the slow game speed, lackluster controls, and bringing them up to par with the year 2020. The games are now fully playable, and perhaps even enjoyable, without all of the issues plaguing the originals.

Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon are two action-adventure video games developed by Animation Magic and published by Philips Interactive Media for the CD-i on 10th October 1993 in North America and 25th December 1993 in Europe.

Both games are based on The Legend of Zelda franchise, but aren't considered part of the official series, and were precursors to the infamous CD-i game Zelda's Adventure. The three Zelda CD-i games are considered among the worst in The Legend of Zelda game franchise.

And yet, for one amateur developer who goes by the name Dopply on Twitter, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon were perfect games to learn how to use game engine GameMaker, and so, over the course of four years, both titles were given the remake treatment.
"I wanted to prove to myself that I could make a game," Dopply said in a FAQ. "It started as a joke between friends, but then I wanted to see if I could actually pull it off. I've flirted with game making for a while but never finished something. This was my chance to do that (well, over the course of four years, I guess). Over time, remastered versions of these notorious titles was something I wanted for myself as well."

Dopply's Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon include widescreen mode, remastered mode for less frustrating play, subtitles, touched up sprites, and unlockables. The games were remade from scratch, so movement, enemy spawns and various other bits and bobs are different. But the remakes are based on the originals and mimic them closely. "I did my best to create what I think a modern release of these games would look and play like," Dopply explained.

:arrow: Source
:arrow: Developer FAQ
:download: Download (Windows/Linux)
 
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But everyone wants lol next Hotel Mario please :rofl2:
I played them with mouse controls like 20 years ago, when they were emulated for the first time, and it is one of the worst experiences I've ever had with videogames.

Hotel Mario wasn't that bad, only boring.

Still, not exactly devs fault. CDi was just a media player without any kind of accelerated graphics hardware, unlike pretty much every console until then. I think it was only capable of mosaic accelerated layers or something like that. It couldn't even accelerate a simple horizontal scroll.
 
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AmandaRose

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I played them with mouse controls like 20 years ago, when they were emulated for the first time, and it is one of the worst experiences I've ever have with videogames.

Hotel Mario wasn't that bad, only boring.

Still, not exactly devs fault. CDi was just a media player without any kind of accelerated graphics hardware, unlike pretty much every console until then. I think it was only capable of mosaic accelerated layers or something like that. It couldn't even accelerate a simple horizontal scroll.
Concidering how bad the CDI was its amazing to think that Nintendo gave Novalogic permission to make a Super Mario World follow up for the CDI. I would have loved to see how bad Super Mario's Wacky World turned out to be had they finished making it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario's_Wacky_Worlds
 

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I know about it, but I didn't think it was OK to post it, since it's still using the original assets and it's a derivative work and all. Isn't that seen as something akin to piracy to the staff here?
Meh it's on archive.org. I don't see the problem then I guess? Don't they have some safehaven thing?

https://archive.org/about/dmca.php
 
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HA HA, WOW! I want to see PeanutButterGamer play THIS version! :D

Hey, PBG from YouTube! If you're reading this, please make a video on this remastered edition and see what you think!

Everyone else, here's a link to the blog post where I compiled a few of his videos together, as well as left my own opinions on a possible remake (which has now happened, ironically!): https://gbatemp.net/entry/the-legend-of-zelda-for-philips-cd-i-so-bad-its-eh-something.17221/

This is great! I hope there will be better remakes of those old CD-i games; I also hope Nintendo allows this. Seeing those reappear (and improved greatly) would be AWESOME!
 
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welp, scratch the one off my to-do list. glad it was done by someone. How playable is it now?
You can play through both in about 1.5 hours each without too much trouble. You'll die a lot, but you restart on the same screen, and infinite lives helps a lot.
Menu and interact are still the same button, and that will probably make you go through doors when you actually meant to open the menu to use the lantern or whatever. Would've liked to see that improved.
Actually, the games aren't too bad now. The bosses are still way too easy, and telling the difference between solid and background objects is just as hard as ever, but the gameplay is actually good.
Just be prepared to run around aimlessly for a while before figuring out where you need to go, and having to do frequent backtracking when you don't have the item required to progress in a certain area, unless you use a guide that is. It doesn't tell you where to go, but it does give you hints about the current area that'll usually tell you what you need to progress or tell you if you're missing anything in the area.
 
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